


What You See In Light

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-29
Updated: 2008-05-29
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:56:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Earth's light. She can already see it in his eyes as he looks at her, and it's the brightest thing in the universe.</i> [Adama/Roslin, Lee, Hera, Baltar]</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You See In Light

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for "Guess What's Coming to Dinner". Not explicitly spoilerish for "Sine Qua Non". Probably AU. Written on a dare from falena84, and betaed by ever awesome lyricalviolet.

What You See In Light  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

Bill didn't believe in Earth.

That's not so odd. He doesn't believe in a lot of things. Gods. Fate. Prophecies. He's a soldier. He just doesn't believe in orders from the Universe. The universe is rock and stars in space, energy and matter as light, sustaining life.

He believes in space. In order. In remembering names. In family created not just by shared genes. In love. In Lee. In Laura Roslin.

He didn't always. Bars between them, a divided fleet told that story. He was angry with her a long time, for believing what he thought a lie, one he didn't want to carry alone. Even when they found a map to it, he still didn't believe. Not really.

He's not sure when it changed. He isn't sure because it must be when he fell in love with her. He doesn't believe in Earth. He believes in her belief in Earth, and he doesn't know when he started. Maybe it's been building all this time, bit by bit, a cabin not made in one day.

They never are.

Now she is gone, on a basestar most assume has gone to an ambush. Without her, belief falters, the fleet stutters, and space seems so much darker.

He's not going to stand for that. It is their fleet, his and hers, survival managed between them. There is an Earth. She believes it, and they were going to find it together.

They're going to find the basestar.

Bill doesn't believe he'll see Laura again. He knows it.

II

Lee likes it simple.

Piloting is simple. Not the skill. Not everyone has the skill, and he knows that. But the life is simple. The idea is simple. Everything in space is either friend or foe, target or drinking buddy. Survive, and it's simple.

Piloting is simple, and he left it.

Doing the right thing is simple. Getting to the truth, staying in a marriage, opposing a coup, not opposing dictatorship, all those are simple. It's the consequences that are complicated. Laura's anger, his father's disappointment, Dee's leaving - right thing to do and yet all the consequences feel so wrong.

Doing the right thing is simple, and Lee keeps feeling he does it wrongly.

Lust is simple. Kara's mouth warm against his tongue, her fingers digging deep into his shoulders, his hands feeling the curve of her ass and the movement as he thrusts. Lust is simple. Frak her in the bunk, in the Viper, perched on a barstool, on the flight deck, against a window to space.

Lust is simple. It's love that brings all the trouble.

Family is simple. Father, son, shared genes. Adama, the unit. Except the father loves a woman the son is at odds with, and the son loves a woman the father considers a daughter. Except the father is Admiral and the son is in the civilian government and they have different opinions on what to do. Except when the father has just taken a battlestar to get a Cylon baseship back and enemy is suddenly ally.

Family is simple. Keeping it from driving you mad isn't.

Earth is simple. A goal. A promise. A carrot. Reach Earth, and all will be well. Reach Earth, humanity survives. Reach Earth, and all will see the light.

Earth is simple. It can afford to be. It isn't real yet, and in the dark, everything's a mess.

Life is easy. Breathe, eat, drink. Breathe. Life in simple actions, simple requirements. Have a heart and you live. Stop a heart, and you die.

Life is simple. Living is painfully hard. Like making a new life in politics. Like holding onto right when it always seems to break into wrong. Like loving Kara when he's not sure it's good for either. Like trying to love your father when you want to yell at him. Like trying to get a dream without breaking it on the way.

Light is simple. Until you break it, and see everything in it.

Lee likes it simple, and still always sees complications.

II

Gaius Baltar doesn't understand Admiral Adama.

All the pilots would welcome him, cheer him. He could be in middle of the crowd as Gaius would have if it was his chance, being hailed. Not Adama. He just waits, almost in shadow, just as he has since the basestar picked him up.

Alone.

"Why is he just standing there?" Gaius asks, and a passing pilot gives him an odd look.

"Gaius," Six says almost mockingly, her arm going around his waist as she leans on him. "Would you like to be him, heroic to everyone here? You're so much more than that, Gaius. Your time will come."

"Will it?"

"Have I lead you wrong so far?"

He doesn't answer, just watches Adama, almost involuntarily taking a few steps closer, as if drawn in. He halts abruptly when he sees Laura Roslin step out from behind a Viper, heading quite determinedly for Adama.

"Oh."

Six smiles at him, tilting her head to watch as he does. Adama has seen Roslin coming, the relief in both faces like mirrors. He doesn't move until she is close enough to touch, and then it's to hug her almost violently.

She whispers something to him, something Gauis can't make out from the distance, but Adama clearly can, because he pulls slightly back and smiles. She smiles, and for a moment, like light through a prism, Gaius sees Laura Roslin through William Adama, all that is in her so bright he almost has to look away.

"Yes," Six whispers, her breath against his ear. "Don't look away. That's how I see you, Gaius. That's how we love."

"All of it," he whispers, still watching as Laura presses her head against Adama's chest and both seem to have a conversation with silence. "It's perfect."

"Love always is."

"I have to tell them about this," he babbles, lifting his hand to mirror Adama's resting on Laura's neck. "This perfection, this God's touch in love. I have to..."

He reaches for a pen, scribbling furiously on his own skin as he has no paper. The words look jumbled, but in his head, they're as bright as a rainbow.

Light is so beautiful because it can be broken, he thinks.

II

  
Hera dreams about the sky.

She knows it's the sky, because it's blue, and mommy has told her skies are. It's just space that is black. Trick of light, mommy called it. Atmosphere, daddy said, and kissed mommy while laughing. Atmosphere. Hera remembers.

Blue is sky.

This is Earth's sky. Her other mommy told her that. Dream mommy, who brings strange people with her and says things Hera doesn't always understand. Words are strange. She's still learning them. Two words and the same thing and trickery of light. It's all very strange.

Sometimes, there's a red-haired mommy in her dream too, running into light. Hera always wants to tell her not to. The light will come soon enough. Red mommy doesn't need to hurry it.

Sometimes she says words in her dream and the dream changes. She likes that. She likes the blue sky. Dream mommy always tells her it's their home and she'll love it. She dreams more and more of it now, like playing a favourite song over and over.

Sometimes, she says words when awake and waits for the change. Black to blue, space to sky. Mommy to dream mommy, light to colours, what she dreams to reality.

Hera dreams of Earth's sky and can't wait to see it.

II

Laura waits in the dark.

She isn't cold, not even with her jacket off, but her skin is still prickling slightly. Her breath feels a bit uneven as well, and she takes a deep breath to steady it just as she feels Bill's arm come to rest on her hip.

He doesn't say anything. He hasn't since they walked in here, since they left the basestar and got back on Galactica. He just led her here, to the privacy of his quarters, his silence almost like foreplay while he locked the door. .

She never quite thought she'd get turned on by what a man isn't saying. But then, she can read his emotions on his face, see his heart in the gaze he holds her in.

She leans back as he moves behind her, tracing the lines of her shoulders, brushing her wig as gently as if it was her own hair and making her wish it was. He breathes against her pulse as he kisses her neck and she thinks faintly about life in him and life without him, and is selfishly glad she probably won't have to mourn him.

He'll mourn her, but she will be here as long as she can. That much she thinks she has promised him, if only by implication.

She tilts her head back and puts a hand on his neck as he kisses her, his tongue brushing lightly against her upper lip. He holds back, she can feel, still controlled, still in command.

That's all right. She's got experience at taking charge now.

She's never undressed an Admiral, but he helps her, and with her shirt too as she kisses the scar across his chest. It feels part of their history, scars and fights and shared responsibility into... Into this, his mouth warm against her naked breast and she arches into it, his hands on her back.

He's still fit, and his thighs are hard against hers, but she can see lines of hard years on his skin. It only makes him more Bill, each year a part of the whole. Between them, they've lived life, had years, gone on beyond the end of the world, found a hope.

They seem to do a half-dance towards the bunk - step, caress, step, kiss, step, skin, step, lift - but then, it's always been a dance. Admiral and President, Bill and Laura, a tango of changing rhythm and beat. It's changing again, and he takes her hand as he lies down and she follows.

He is hard when she touches him, and he closes her eyes when she strokes him, a very careful expression of restraint on his face. She has to smile at it, and kiss him, and feel traitorously alive.

Skin, sweat and silence in the dark, starring Bill Adama and Laura Roslin. That's good. It is good. It is.

He still doesn't say anything, and she matches her silence with her own, even he turns her on the side and lets his fingers travel up her thigh. Only once does she sharply inhale, at the moment it officially is frakking, and she has a leg over his to feel his mucles as he moves.

She doesn't need words to know, and she doesn't need light to see.

The most beautiful thing about coming to Earth, she knows, will be to see the light of its sun on Bill's face, and kiss the warmth of it on his lips.

Earth's light. She can already see it in his eyes as he looks at her, and it's the brightest thing in the universe.

II

Space isn't dark. It is merely the distance between lights, the pause between planets, the silence between stars. Space is absence, not dark.

From space, Earth is blue. Blue and white, water and clouds, same thing in different from. But from Earth, it is space that is blue, like an ocean of silence that clouds sail in.

Tricks of light. That's all.

It's still enough to see.

FIN 


End file.
